Opera Buffa Research Articles

From opera buffa to opera seria: anniversaries of Royal College of Surgeons of England research initiatives.

From opera buffa to opera seria: anniversaries of Royal College of Surgeons of England research initiatives.

Libretti Housed at the Anderson Music Library of the University of Louisville

Libretti Housed at the Anderson Music Library of the University of Louisville John Karr (bio) The rare libretto collection at the Anderson Music Library of the University of Louisville contains over three hundred individual libretti (a number which does not include duplicate copies), two hundred of which are for Tuscan performances (Florence and Siena), forty-seven of which are for Italian performances outside of Tuscany (Naples, Milan, Bergamo, Lucca, etc.), thirty-two of which are for publication (mostly by Ricordi and Barion), and the remaining that represent a mixed lot from non-Italian presses and performances. The Tuscan libretti are focused mainly on the period from the 1780s until the mid-nineteenth century for productions primarily at the Pergola and Cocomero theaters in Florence and for the various academies of Siena. While not rare in the sense of being unica, they do present a marvelous picture of the Tuscan theater in the period encompassing the end of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the protectorship of Napoleon up until the Unification of Italy. Italian opera in the late eighteenth century tends to be overshadowed in the general histories of the period by the Viennese court and the operas of Gluck, Mozart, and Salieri. Even when Italian opera of this period is discussed, it is usually focused on Venice and Naples, with lesser mention of Milan, Bologna, and sometimes Rome. Dennis Libby celebrated Naples and Venice as the two most influential opera centers; Naples ascendant with the foundation of the Teatro San Carlo and the musical direction of Jomelli and Paisiello, and Venice gently declining into obscurity but nonetheless vital in its embrace of opera, and culture more generally, to replace its increasing political irrelevance.1 John Rice would focus his writing on Italian opera only in the first half of the eighteenth century (chapters three and four) with Naples and Venice before turning for the [End Page 524] bulk of his book to music outside of Italy.2 John Rosselli notes the theaters of Naples, Milan, Rome, and Bologna, but does not mention Florence at all. For him, late eighteenth-century Italian opera serves as an appetizer (with the exception of the opera buffa by Paisiello and Cimarosa, standing out from a period characterized by the increasing rigidity of the form of opera seria) to the real operatic explosion that is begun by Rossini in the post-Napoleonic period.3 The Tuscan libretti, which form the bulk of the collection in this catalog, are important for shedding light on the largely-ignored flowering of opera that took place in Florence in the period lasting from the reign of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo (1765–90) to the establishment of the modern Italian state in 1859. According to Robert L. Weaver, during the last days of Pietro Leopoldo's reign, Tuscan theaters (again, primarily the Pergola and the Cocomero) surpassed Milan and rivaled Venice, Naples, and Rome in the production of new Italian operas.4 In addition to this reinvigoration of Tuscan opera, Pietro Leopoldo also established rules that would promote Tuscan composers and performers over imported ones and set standards for quality in the compositions and the performances.5 His generous support of opera was continued by his son Ferdinando III (reigned 1791–1800). Even when Napoleon's invasion and conquest placed Florence under French control, the theater maintained an active schedule, albeit with more imported composers and directors. Ferdinando III would be restored to the Grand Duchy upon the abdication of Napoleon in 1814 and would reign another ten years before his son Leopoldo II (reigned 1824–59) assumed the Grand Duchy up until the establishment of the modern Italian State (and expulsion of the Austrian Grand Dukes) in 1859. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Milan and Naples would become the dominant centers for opera production in Italy, eclipsing Florence. The libretti cataloged herein are a wonderful resource, not only for Tuscan composers and productions of this period, but also for the inclusion of cast lists and lists of the musicians who participated in the performances. Of particular interest is the evidence of families of Tuscan (both Florentine and Sienese) singers who began to dominate the stages...

Multiple Spectacular Identities or about variations of artistic forms on the same subject

In the creation of humanity, there are several subjects that have proven universal, crossing the ages. They have been individually approached by most of the arts, notably by the performing arts, thus acquiring multiple identity forms of expression. Due to the notoriety born from the fascination they have exercised over generations, some subjects have even come to be represented in all the performing formulas of art. In Romanian creation, the subjects of numerous popular or cult literary texts, lyrical or epic, became sources for the creators of the performing arts. At the same time, some of the dramatic texts crossed beyond the stage of the classical theatre. The plays of the most performed local playwright, Ion Luca Caragiale stand out here. In the relationship between classical and lyrical theatre, the most representative illustration is „O noapte furtunoasă” Caragiale's play was turned into an opera by Paul Constantinescu, the composer thereby marking a triple national premiere: the first opera buffa, the birth of recitative in Romanian opera and the first male role en travesti for a female voice.

Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno: the Original Score Examined

Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno was the first comic opera, which opened the Venetian era in the history of opera buffa. Contemporary dictionaries name Carlo Goldoni (text) and Vincenzo Legrenzio Ciampi (music) as its authors. The detailed review of the manuscript (preserved in the Estense Library in Modena) undertaken in the article for the first time, reveals the original “pasticcio” nature of this opera. An analysis of the handwriting and various markings shows that the score contains musical material representing two different productions of the opera: the Venice premiere in 1749 and a performance in London in 1755. Ciampi, who wrote about one third of all the musical numbers for the Venetian premiere of the opera in 1749, was apparently joined in his work by other composers. For the London production in 1755 Ciampi added a newly composed portion of musical numbers, however, still almost a quarter of the entire score remained consisting of insertions of music by other composers. The surviving music also makes it possible to establish exactly what material from the Venetian production was used in the parodies on this opera composed in Paris: Bertholde à la ville by Louis Anseaume (1754) and Le Caprice Amoureux, ou, Ninette à la cour by Charles-Simon Favart (1755). The study of Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno expands our understanding of the practices of opera buffa at the early stage of its history.

The Evolution of Opera Performance from Scenographic Miracles to the Opera Productions of the Nineteenth Century

"The presentation of the book The Evolution of Opera Performance, from Scenographic Miracles to the Opera Productions of the 19th Century, offers a synthesis of our work as a musical theatre director. Our aim is to stimulate the public’s interest in the opera genre and opera staging, by revealing aspects in the history of opera performance(s), as they have been shaped, century after century, by following the gradual effort and the tireless passion of its creators. Our aims are also to illustrate the original charm and the infinite resources of this genre, which continues to delight the public at large and the knowledgeable even today. Keywords: opera performance, opera staging, liturgical drama, vernacular drama, secular drama, dramatic madrigal, intermedi, the Florentine Camerata, Claudio Monteverdi, comédies-ballets, tragédie en musique, semi-opera, opera seria, the comic opera, opera buffa, ópera comique, ballad opera, Singspiel, tonadilla, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart "

Guadagni in Handel’s London: the formation of a voice

Abstract Guadagni’s first visit to London spanned seven years, from the autumn of 1748 to summer 1755. He arrived from the Veneto as an inexperienced singer at the outset of his career, having been expelled from the Cappella di Sant’ Antonio in Padua after a mere six months’ employment, and, in the subsequent season, taken a couple of ‘third man’ roles in an undistinguished opera company. In London he quickly developed his career, securing leading roles in Crosa’s touring opera buffa company and appearing regularly in concerts both in London and in provincial festivals. But by far the most significant activity was his contribution, from 1750, to Handel’s oratorio series. For six Lenten seasons, Handel’s music dominated Guadagni’s repertory, both in London and in Dublin. Although Handel created only two roles specifically for him, he adapted many others to suit his voice, with Guadagni taking over either those originally written for female voices, including the contralto Susanna Cibber and the mezzo-soprano Giulia Galli, or those which had been performed by his fellow castratos Andreoni and Senesino; in addition, his concert repertory included solos and duets taken from Handel’s operas and oratorios. Having arrived in England a raw and untested novice, Guadagni left an accomplished soloist, going on to take ‘first man’ roles throughout Europe. This article examines the music written for, assigned to and chosen by Guadagni, to trace the part played by Handel’s music in forming the singer at the outset of his career, and argues that Handel was, in his turn, well served by Guadagni’s distinctive vocal talents.

Another Mention of Thebesian Veins in the Heart: Should It Be the Last?

Another Mention of Thebesian Veins in the Heart: Should It Be the Last?

14. The Violin in L’histoire Du Soldat – A Metaphor of the Soul

Abstract From 1909, Stravinsky manifested a keen interest in composing theatre music, as proves the many and various dedicated scores. Almost all of his large works, from the ballet The Firebird (1909-10) to the one-act opera buffa Mavra (1921-22), are written for the stage. Stravinsky thus worked most of the time with scenic presentations, with questions on movement, dance, gestures or scenic tableaus. He develops a particular theatrical instinct: his works have a good scenic orientation, and the correlation with modernism and the new currents in theatre aesthetics is more than obvious. Critics have already analysed and discussed the parallels with such contemporary theatrical concepts as by Bertold Brecht (1898-1956) or Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940). After three great ballets, whose new conception by Stravinsky and Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) brought about a fundamental revolution in dance aesthetics, the composer crystallises his notion of incidental music. The aesthetics of L’Histoire du soldat, a work “to be read, played and danced”, is opposed to that of Richard Wagner (1813-83) and his Gesamtkunstwerk (a work blending various arts, a total work of art): a new artistic idea, frozen in gesture and movement, compressed, finding its concentrated expression. Stravinsky establishes a brilliant draft of the issues of Opera, to which he would from now on dedicate himself. Stravinsky’s theatre music reveals a tendency to introduce new concepts in the works written between Sacre du printemps and Pulcinella. A quick look at his stage works before and after L’histoire is necessary in order to fit it in his artistic view.

Seinen , Nathan Prokofiev's Soviet Operas (review)

SEER, 99, 1, JANUARY 2021 174 of which is Konstantin Rudnitskii’s seminal book on Meierkhol´d, available in translation. The index is also incomplete in that several names cited in the text do not appear there, an example being that of the cultural commissar Zhdanov, who appears as ‘Zhadanov’ (on p. 163). The Neapolitan author, Elena Ferrante, recently had this to say about the act of writing, of which the present author and his publishers would do well to take note. She speaks of needing the attention of readers ‘who will focus on […] carelessness: mistakes in chronology, repetitiveness, incomprehensible formulations […]. If an editor says: in your text there are good things but we need to work on it, you’re better off withdrawing the manuscript’. London Nick Worrall Seinen, Nathan. Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas. Music Since 1900. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2019. xiv + 255 pp. Musical examples. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £75.00. In this important monograph — two of whose four chapters have already appeared as individual journal articles — Nathan Seinen sheds new light on Sergei Prokof´ev’s long career as an opera composer, focusing on the four works composed in the Soviet Union. As one of the most prominent forms of the nineteenth-century Russian canon, opera resurfaced in the artistically more conservative atmosphere of the 1930s, not least because it seemed able simultaneously to answer the need for forms capable of conveying ideology and propaganda on a mass scale. Noting that Prokof´ev had struggled to get his Ognennyi angel (The Fiery Angel) and Liubov´ k trem apel´sinam (The Love for Three Oranges) staged in the West, Seinen suggests that his return to the Soviet Union may have been motivated, at least in part, by the realization that opera was a genre increasingly favoured by the Soviet authorities. Seinen is alive to the ideological implications of the ‘Soviet opera project’, as it has come to be known, whilst expanding his analytical framework to include aspects of cultural history. His account is rooted in an impressive command of a wide range of archival and critical sources, which help to map the complex network of top-down expectations and behind-the-scenes debates which shaped the genesis of each of the four operas under consideration — Semen Kotko, Voina i mir (War and Peace), Obruchenie v monastyre (Betrothal in a Monastery) and Povest´ o nastoiashchem cheloveke (The Story of a Real Man). A recurrent theme is the concatenation of vicissitudes that Prokof´ev faced at each turn. He was, after all, an experienced composer for the stage, and his return to opera in the Soviet Union should have been an exciting prospect REVIEWS 175 for all concerned. Yet the many years he had lived and worked in the West meant that he was always tainted with the accusation of cosmopolitanism (and later, in 1948, formalism), and none of his operas had either an easy path to the stage, or an untroubled reception. Prokof´ev’s brush with politics is a familiar enough story, of course, but the value of Seinen’s study is the way in which he adroitly moves the debate on to issues of form and genre. Refusing to see Socialist Realism in monolithic terms, Seinen teases out important distinctions between the aesthetic premises governing each opera and deftly unfolds some often unexpected intertextual echoes. Each chapter follows a largely similar structure; after an elaboration of the operas’ literary source texts (Valetin Kataiev, Lev Tolstoi, Richard Brindley Sheridan as translated by Mira Mendel´son, Boris Polevoi), attention turns to a detailed consideration of the musical means deployed, which is then followed by a discussion of the relevant critical reaction. Accordingly, Semen Kotko emerges as a work shaped by the generic conventions of melodrama, whereas Obruchenie v monastyre is ‘an opera-ballet hybrid’ (p. 18), with elements also derived from opera buffa. Voina i mir and Povest´ o nastoiashchem cheloveke emerge as more closely linked to aspects of contemporary history — the cult of personality and wartime leadership in the case of the former, and aspects of Soviet heroism, the New Soviet Person and subjectivity in the case of the latter. Seinen’s attention to...

Финал в зингшпиле «Доктор и аптекарь» Диттерсдорфа и традиции оперы buffa

Doktor and Apotheker, a singspiel by Dittersdorf, is one of the most successful and popular operas of the 18th century. Many researchersclaim that the reason for its popularity is the “chain finale” that was first introduced by the composer. During the theatre reformation under the reign of Joseph II, German opera did not have its own models of final scenes to complete the acts. Dittersdorf was one of the pioneer composers who first applied Italian models to a singspiel. The finale is one of the central scenes in opera buffa demonstrating sophisticated dramatic situations and original music solutions. The article compares the final of the first act of Doktor and Apotheker and central finals of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro as well as Dittersdorf’s Italian opera Democrito Corretto. The detailed analysis of the dramatic line, the structure of final scenes and means of expression shows that the opera embraces Italian traditions on different levels: from plots and characters to specific musical means. All of them make an organic contribution to the traditions of singspiel. Dittersdorf’s new approach to the opera finale laid the foundation for future generations of Austrian and German composers.

Músicos, acción y contexto: reconstruyendo la escena musical porteña desde la trayectoria biográfica del empresario Pablo Rosquellas


 El presente artículo parte de la reconstrucción de la trayectoria de Pablo Rosquellas, músico y empresario teatral español que vivió en Buenos Aires entre 1823 y 1831. Este punto de partida nos conduce al objetivo del trabajo: mostrar cómo el análisis de las acciones que desplegaron músicos y empresarios permite complejizar –al tiempo que discutir– una visión que establece a las prácticas culturales de la élite porteña como la consecuencia del accionar modernizador y reformista del grupo rivadaviano.
 En este sentido, la trayectoria biográfica de Rosquellas nos posibilita desplazar el foco de análisis de la política rivadaviana y situarlo en la dinámica de la cultura musical porteña, particularmente en la consolidación de la ópera buffa. Así, es posible advertir que la conformación de una escena musical moderna –que trascendió las fronteras de la provincia y se insertó en una cultura artística global vinculada a la ópera–, antes que la consecuencia de un programa cultural preestablecido por el poder político rivadaviano, fue el resultado de un entramado de acciones situadas y con grados de especificidad de diversos actores musicales.

"Am liebsten wäre mir Rom!": Stefan Zweig und Italien ed. by Arturo Larcati and Klemens Renolder

Reviewed by: "Am liebsten wäre mir Rom!": Stefan Zweig und Italien ed. by Arturo Larcati and Klemens Renolder Cynthia A. Klima Arturo Larcati and Klemens Renolder, eds., "Am liebsten wäre mir Rom!": Stefan Zweig und Italien. Schriftenreihe des Stefan Zweig Zentrum Salzburg 9. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2019. 216 pp. As well known as Stefan Zweig is in the German-speaking world, little is [End Page 110] known about his love and admiration for Italian culture. Italy was a place in which he saw European culture rooted, as a place that cultivated and expressed beauty in both prose and poetry. Indeed, it is interesting to note that Italy became Zweig's "Wahlheimat" of sorts, in that during the course of his relatively short life, he came into contact with many Italian artists and intellectuals who further spurred his love for and interest in the country. It comes as little surprise as well that Zweig chose Rome to be his city of exile in 1934, the year he departed Salzburg. The collection of essays in this volume is the result of a Stefan Zweig symposium that took place in Meran, South Tyrol, in 2011. It documents the Italian side of Zweig culturally, linguistically, politically, and personally. The purpose of the collection is to "discover" Zweig's admiration for Italy, as stated in the foreword of the work, "Zweigs Verhältnis zu Italien ist noch zu entdecken" (7). This "Entdeckung des Südens" developed during the course of several phases. As Arturo Larcati emphasizes in his essay Stefan Zweigs heimliche Liebe zur italienischen Literatur, "Mit keiner anderen Literatur, wenn man von der französischen absieht, hat sich Stefan Zweig so intensiv und kontinuierlich beschäftigt wie mit der italienischen" (31). Larcati explains Zweig's interests in the classicists, his contemporaries, and the writers of the younger generation, respectively, Dante Alighieri, Gabriele D'Annunzio, and Ignacio Silone. Larcati's contribution to this volume provides a good discussion of Zweig's intellectual activities in Italy during Mussolini's dictatorship and Zweig's own fascination with Silone, who operated as a strict anti-Mussolini activist, as evidenced in his novels. The theme flows further in the essay "Briefe über den italienischen Faschismus: Rainer Maria Rilke und Stefan Zweig" by Walter Busch und Isolde Schiffermüller. It is noted how little Zweig and Rilke actually wrote about Italian fascism and how both remained politically unmotivated by the political actions surrounding them, mostly out of fear for their own safety. Indeed, Zweig's own dramas and comedies enjoyed much more popularity during his lifetime than they do today. His dramas are seldom seen on the stage; his comedies remain virtually unknown since his death. In fact, he also translated Luigi Pirandello's play Non si sa come as Man weiß nicht wie, which was requested of Zweig by Pirandello. This translation is discussed thoroughly by Fausto de Michele in his article "Etappen einer Rezeptionsgeschichte: Stefan Zweig übersetzt Luigi Pirandello." In this article, de Michele discusses the original source work for this play and how [End Page 111] the play came to be. The process of the translation of the play is discussed in detail. In addition, de Michele provides attentive analysis of the translation, which differs wildly from the original Italian-language play. Because of the precarious political situation, Zweig kept his relationship with Pirandello completely professional. However thrilled he was by the opportunity to translate Pirandello's work, the political situation hindered Zweig's desire to participate in a theater congress organized by Pirandello, for fear of angering fascist authorities. De Michele provides an excellent description of this entire translation dilemma, something that remains virtually unknown about Zweig's professional life. In the contribution "Strategeien der Komik in Volpone und Die Schweigsame Frau: Stefan Zweig und die Commedia dell'arte," Monika Meister provides a discussion of Zweig's talent as a writer of comedy. Although his play Volpone is rarely seen on the stage, Zweig remains revered as a writer who reestablished the Italian tradition of Commedia dell'arte and opera buffa. Meister discusses Zweig's use of both English and Italian theatrical models and the mixture he used to produce highly unusual...

Classical to Romantic: new opera and oratorio releases

Handling the handsome box-set CDs of these five operas and oratorios is a curiously Nineties and Noughts nostalgic pleasure, akin to a music lover in the 1930s picking up a wax cylinder. They seem elaborate objects now—the gate-fold sleeves, the lengthy liner notes; one is even a little hardback book. Was the font size always so small? The memories roar back of trips to now-shuttered classical CD shops, conversations with the informed person behind the counter, browsing the shelves and finding hidden gems which then became a firm favourite. The world premiere recording of Vicente Martín y Soler: L’arbore di Diana (Dynamic cds 651, issued 2013, 143′), here elegantly conducted by Harry Bicket and recorded live at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona in 2013, could well become such a beloved resident of my shelves. Not to be confused with his older countryman and fellow composer Antonio Soler, the Spanish-born Vicente Martín y Soler is a relatively obscure figure now, but in his day was a beloved composer of opera buffa, on a footing with Salieri and Mozart. Indeed, at the time of L’arbore (1787), Martín y Soler was sharing his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte with both. Da Ponte recounts in his memoirs that, fuelled by wine, tobacco and caffeine, he wrote L’arbore di Diana in the morning, Tarar for Salieri in the afternoon and then Don Giovanni in the evening. A crazy day, indeed. Da Ponte and Mozart tip their hats to their peer, quoting a tune from Martín y Soler’s previous hit Una cosa rara in Don Giovanni’s dinner scene. For this listener wearing his opera director’s hat, the libretto is a fascinating artefact, and it is a fun game to spot Da Ponte’s tics and repetitions from Don Giovanni (the use of ‘Bagatelle!’, ‘Non c’e altro?’ and even ‘Madamina’) and his stylistic defaults such as Le nozze di Figaro’s stichomythic ‘Chi? Chi? Chi?’, while admiring as always Da Ponte’s seemingly effortless flow of brilliantly written recitative into number and back into recitative, that ease of movement undoubtedly subconsciously guiding the compositional process.

Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture ed. by Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley, and Ian Newman

Reviewed by: Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture ed. by Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley, and Ian Newman Andrew Pink Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture. Edited by Oskar Cox Jensen, David Kennerley, and Ian Newman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. [xxvi, 249 p. ISBN 978-0-198-81242-5. £55] This book of essays springs from a two-day conference held at Kings College, London in 2014, part of the "Music in London 1800–1851" project funded by the European Research Council and led by Roger Parker, the Kings College Thurston Dart Professor of Music. For those with an interest in British musical life of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries the name of Charles Dibdin (1745–1814) will be familiar not only as a prolific and popular autodidact songwriter and composer (and librettist) of theatre works but also as an actor, entrepreneur, impresario, author, and journalist. And yet today he may be regarded as one of the period's best-known unknowns, despite having extensive entries in both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Jon A. Gillespie 2004, rev. 2014) and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Roger Fiske and Irena Cholij 1992, rev. 2001). But, for all his contemporary popularity and subsequent scholarly esteem, his music remains largely unperformed except for his patriotic naval song Tom Bowling, orchestrated by Henry Wood (1869–1944) and a 'BBC Last Night of the Proms' favourite. Part of the problem for Dibdin's reputation is that earlier commentators have relied almost entirely for their material on Dibdin's own autobiographical and journalistic writing with little direct reference to his artistic output and others' observations. These autobiographical and journalistic works, as the editors point out in the first chapter—"Introducing Mr Dibdin"—were highly selective in design, meant to present "the authoritative 'public' Dibdin" (p. 3), and as a result, he has been "ill-served by [. . .] academic enquiry" (p. 3), a situation the book seeks to redress. Following this expository chapter, the book is divided into three parts comprising a series of essays, "guest interludes", and an "afterword". I must confess to having found this plan a rather fussy concept; "chapter" in all cases would have sufficed. Part One 'Dibdin in Context' Chapter 2, "Mungo Here, Mungo There: Dibdin and Racial Performance" by Felicity Nussbaum discusses Dibdin's celebrated blackface role as the enslaved African Mungo, the main character in Dibdin's own "opera buffa" The Padlock (1768). There is some informative discussion of Dibdin's use of music to heighten the text. While Nussbaum helpfully places The Padlock in the context of Dibdin's several other stage works that also deal with racial and sexual/gendered captivity, as well as his other writings on slavery, she does not attempt in any meaningful way to link Dibdin's output with the abolition debates that swirled throughout the period. Nussbaum does however conclude that while Dibdin probably did abhor the cruel treatment of slaves he probably did not regard slavery as inherently abhorrent (pp. 39–40). Chapter 3, "Dibdin at the Royal Circus" by Michael Burden is a study of Dibdin's involvement (1782–84; 1785) with the setting up of this widely-known but little written-about south London theatre venue, its origins, its design, its collaborative management team, and its novel programming that mixed equestrian spectacle and musical theatre with child actors. A number of these children were the offspring of well-established London stage-folk, enrolled in the Royal Circus's own acting school. As we might expect from the pen of a senior figure in the world of theatre studies, the piece is informed by an assiduous attention to primary source material and historical antecedent. It is a shame, however, that there was not more to say about the acting school and its eventual demise. Also, with the attention given to topographical details, I would have liked a map to show the location. [End Page 304] Interlude 1, "Dibdin and Robert Bloomfield: Voicing the Clown in Town" by Katie Osborn presents us with some examples of Dibdin's use of rural characters and dialect in his stage works and songs, drawing our attention to use of...

На пересечении традиций: Австрия и Россия в творческой судьбе В. Мартин-и-Солера

The article discusses the key role of Austria and Russia in the creative development of the Spanish composer Vicente Martín y Soler, who was engaged in the transformation of the opera buffa as a genre. The study applies comparative historical and social contextual analysis, which allows to reveal certain similarities in distribution and popularization of Martín y Soler’s music, its penetration into everyday musical culture of Vienna and St. Petersburg. The article highlights the importance of lyrical and pastoral imagery aimed to please the amateur audience. It focuses on various distribution channels including handwritten materials, published scores and transcriptions for voice and keyboards, different sets of instruments for domestic music-making, transcriptions, and variations on popular themes. A peculiar approach to popularization is a serious reworking of opera music at times resulting in change of the very essence of the genre, for example, the publication or distribution of handwritten materials in the form of dances. The article scrutinizes the productions of popular operas (“A Rare Thing” and “The Tree of Diana”) in national languages staged in Vienna and in St. Petersburg. Thanks to free libretto translations, popular works absorbed the features of each national culture and reflected local realities. In Austria, they resemble the singspiel and in Russia – laid the foundations for the development of Russian comic opera. The article provides an overview of some handwritten materials of the Yusupov collection (National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg) which includes a range of transcriptions. This provides evidence that Russian aristocracy showed a genuine interest in Martín y Soler’s music. The article is a first attempt of a comparative analysis of the two most famous operas of the Spanish composer as regards their public perception in Austria and Russia in the 1780s-90s. The study allowed to conclude that these countries have similar patterns in the use and the distribution of the composer’s music.

Sounding Funny: Sound and Comedy Cinema ed. by Mark Evans and Philip Hayward

Reviewed by: Sounding Funny: Sound and Comedy Cinema ed. by Mark Evans and Philip Hayward Jessica Getman Sounding Funny: Sound and Comedy Cinema. Edited by Mark Evans and Philip Hayward. (Genre, Music, and Sound.) Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2016. [vi, 259 p. ISBN 9781781790991 (hardback), $100; ISBN 9781845536749 (paperback), $29.99; ISBN 9781781792766 (e-book), varies]. Illustrations, music examples, index. Though music and sound are essential to the success of comedy on film, the methods employed by composers and directors to this end are difficult to pin down. Producing a compact definition of comedy itself is a slippery task, something Liz Guiffre and Mark Evans emphasize in the introduction to Sounding Funny: Sound and Comedy Cinema. Though often invoked as a generic label, comedy is better understood as a mode of expression that uses a diverse collection of techniques that vary according to context. To get around this, the essays in this book focus not on comedic theory but on texts: films and sequences in which the use of sound in the service of humor has been particularly successful. Topics addressed in this approach include influential franchises, prominent composers, and famous scene formulas and comic routines. The book has an international scope, engaging not only the dominant practices of Hollywood but also comedies coming out of Britain, Finland, Spain, Japan, and India. It reaches across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, from the Three Stooges beginning in 1934, to Yuji Nakae's Nabi no koi (Nabbie's Love) in 1999 and Philip Claydon's Lesbian Vampire Killers in 2009. Sound Funny excels at drawing out and analyzing an impressive variety of comedic and musical moments in film. In privileging text over theory, the book's authors nevertheless illuminate many comedic tools and techniques. Essays touch on parody, intertextual reference, and the interplay of aural and physical gestures. They also highlight the oft-employed tension between high and low culture, emphasized through the juxtaposition of musical styles. A recurring theme is the central role of incongruity—the unexpected collision of moods, modes, styles, and ideas that elicits surprise and delight—for which sound and music are especially effective tools. This idea is considered at length in the book's second essay, Marshall Heiser's "The Soundtrack as Appropriate Incongruity," which considers the "playful tolerance of paradox" (p. 37) in a number of films from the mid-twentieth century, including the Three Stooges' shorts (which began in 1934), Jacques Tati's Jour de Fête (1949), Michael Powell's They're a Weird Mob (1966), and several spoofs by Mel Brooks in the late 1970s [End Page 661] (including Blazing Saddles [1974] and High Anxiety [1977]). Heiser's conclusion is that that humor in these cases exhibits an "emergent property, rising from contradictory aural and visual cues to become more than the sum of their parts (p. 26). Whether by design or chance, composer Elmer Bernstein dominates the book. Ben Winters, in "The Sound of Satire; or Trading Places with Mozart," considers social commentary in the film by John Landis (1983), noting how Bernstein's score highlights the film's "overdrawn opposites" between high and low culture (and between white and black culture) by juxtaposing classical music and popular song (p. 30). In so doing, Winters demonstrates how the film more successfully satirizes the social policies of the Reagan administration than the more obvious racial issues on the film's surface. Winters reads this film as a modern-day opera buffa modeled on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. Erik Heine's chapter, "Parody, Self-Parody and Genre-Parody: Music in The Magnificent Seven and ¡Three Amigos!," considers Bern stein's parody of his own work in The Magnificent Seven (1960) in the 1986 comedy about three hapless Hollywood actors in Mexico. Heine analyzes similarities between the films' scores and title cues, as well as the use of popular song by Randy Newman. Finally, Jon Fitzgerald and Philip Haywardtackle one of the best known and most influential of Hollywood's comedies, Ghostbusters (1984). Their essay addresses how the principle elements of the score—Bernstein's orchestral music (drawn from horror conventions), its rock-pop tracks, and the film...

Film Melodrama and Opera: La Tosca in Italian Cinema

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the relationship between film melodrama and opera from an intermedial perspective. In addition to drawing on relevant literature in the fields of intermediality and melodrama studies, it incorporates literary and musicological theories. It argues that while opera and melodrama are related, the operatic and the melodramatic are distinct modes of artistic expression. Comparable to the melodramatic mode, the operatic mode appears in many media and is highly relevant for the Italian cinema. In the first part, the article distinguishes between the operatic and melodramatic mode and points to relevant elements of the relationship between melodrama, opera, and the Italian cinema. To illustrate significant aspects of this connection, the second part of this article reflects on two films based on Victorien Sardou’s drama La Tosca (1887): Carlo Koch’s Tosca (1941) and Luigi Magni’s La Tosca (1973). The two films incorporate operatic and melodramatic elements very differently. While in Koch’s version the musical discours is at times comparable to arias in opera, the film also incorporates instances of melodrama. Magni’s film, on the other hand, transforms Sardou’s drama into a musical film reminiscent of opera buffa. It communicates less on the affective level and rather evokes a cognitive reflection on Italy’s reality of the early 1970s.

A MOZART DUET IN A SARTI OPERA: ‘LÀ CI DAREM LA MANO’ IN UDINE, 1793

Giuseppe Sarti's opera buffa Fra i due litiganti il terzo gode was one of the great operatic successes of the late eighteenth century. First performed in Milan in September 1782, the opera was quickly taken up by theatres in other cities. In 1783 it began a long run at the Burgtheater in Vienna, where it had been performed more than sixty times by 1790. The opera was produced everywhere from Barcelona to Copenhagen, from Rouen to St Petersburg, in languages including German, French and Danish. By 1800 Fra i due litiganti had been given more than eighty productions across all of Europe.

Two Operas from the Series Die zween Anton. Part 1: Der dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebürge oder Die zween Anton (Vienna, 1789) ed. by David J. Buch, and: Two Operas from the Series Die zween Anton. Part 2: Die verdeckten Sachen (Vienna, 1789) ed. by David J. Buch

GERMAN COMIC OPERAS FROM EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VIENNA Operas from Series Die zween Anton. Part 1: Der dumme Gartner aus dem Geburge oder Die zween Anton (Vienna, 1789). Edited by David J. Buch. (Recent Researches in Music of Classical Era, 96.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2015. [Contents, p. v-vi; abbrevs. and sigla, p. vii-viii; acknowledgments, p. ix; introd., p. xi-xviii; text and translation, p. xix-lxi; plates, p. lxii-lxv; cast and instruments, p. 2; score, p. 3-195; crit. report, p. 197-203; appendix, p. 205-16. ISBN-13 978-089579-811-4. $270.]Two Operas from Series Die zween Anton. Part 2: Die verdeckten Sachen (Vienna, 1789). Edited by David J. Buch. (Recent Researches in Music of Classical Era, 98.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2016. [Contents, p. v-vi; abbrevs. and sigla, p. vii; acknowledgments, p. viii; introd., p. ix-xii; text and translation, p. xiii-lxiii; plates, p. lxiv-lxvi; cast and instruments, p. 2; score, p. 3-299; crit. report, p. 301-6; appendix, p. 309-36. ISBN-13 978-0-89579-824-4. $360.]A principal focus for eighteenth-century musicological studies in recent decades has been exploring various contexts in which canonic composers lived and worked. Naturally, Vienna has received considerable attention. Many of these studies have concentrated on opera buffa, and thanks to efforts of scholars such as Daniel Heartz, Mary Hunter, John Platoff, James Webster, and others, we now have a broad base of knowledge for understanding genre. Examinations of Vienna's German-language operatic productions have not been as numerous, and amount of published critical editions and recordings lags behind as well. The current state of affairs makes David Buch's latest opera publications for A-R Editions all more welcome. Buch has been a key contributor to this avenue of scholarship with his research on Mozart's German operas and German-language works of Mozart's contemporaries. Buch has also been active as an editor of this repertoire, and several of his projects have already been published in Recent Researches in Music of Classical Era series: Der Stein der Weisen (vol. 76), Der wohltatige Derwisch (vol. 81), Der Spiegel von Arkadian (vols. 93-94), and Liedersammlung fur Kinder und Kinderfreunde am Clavier (vol. 95). His latest efforts in this vein are first two operas from series Die zween Anton.The Two Antons franchise may be unknown to opera-goers today, but it achieved an intense level of popularity in Vienna in late eighteenth century, such that July 1789 original inspired six sequels in rapid succession by January 1795. In fact, first four operas in sequence premiered within a span of only eleven months. Performances reached nearly every theater in German-speaking lands, and versions even appeared in Czech translation before series waned in popularity and disappeared from theater records early in next century. The remarkable success of original opera in series, Der dumme Gartner aus dem Geburge oder Die zween Anton, brought its librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, to attention of Vienna's theatrical world, and paved way for his later collaborations with Mozart, who noted in a 1790 letter to his wife, Constanze, his pleasure with the Antons. (Mozart also based his last set of piano variations, K. 613, on Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding auf der Welt, a popular aria from second opera in series, Die verdeckten Sachen.)For music, Schikaneder relied on a team of composers. This composition-bycommittee approach reflected realities of Vienna's competitive operatic world: with multiple theaters in city performing opera, it was important to turn out a steady supply of popular works and quickly capitalize on successes. The demand for new productions thus necessitated involvement of multiple hands. For Die zween Anton, Schikaneder likely utilized Benedikt Schack, Franz Xaver Gerl, and Johann Baptist Henneberg. …

Peculiar Attunements: Comic Opera and Enlightenment Mimesis

Peculiar Attunements: Comic Opera and Enlightenment Mimesis